By Kristin Erekson - Tuesday October 31 2006

Students participate in The Jewish Lens project.

Israeli photographer offers program at Gann

Through his black and white snapshots, Israeli photographer Zion Ozeri is guiding young scholars on a tour through Jewish communities around the world.

subscribe to The Jewish Advocate email this page to a friend print this page email the editor In an effort to ultimately help students capture their own values, identities and traditions by simply analyzing his pictures, Ozeri has created a curriculum around the craft of photography called The Jewish Lens.

A combined total of 63 students from Gann Academy in Waltham, the school Colegio Tarbut in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the Ironi Hey High School in Haifa, Israel, participated in Ozeri's program and documented their Jewish lives for several months through photography. On Oct. 18, Ozeri met his artistic apprentices at Gann Academy to share his work and to also delve deeper into the true meaning behind the snapshots taken by the students.

"I believe photography is just another language," said Ozeri, who lives in New York City and was born in Hadera, Israel. He noted that he developed the idea for The Jewish Lens program two years ago and that the curriculum is now instituted in more than 50 schools across the country.

"You can tell a story with an image," Ozeri added. "I realized more and more how influential photography can be and how it can touch people's lives on not only a physical level but an emotional level. So I thought that photography could be used as an educational tool that would let students connect the dots between images ... and help them read between the lines."

Students sat in the Jewish school's cafeteria mesmerized by Ozeri's images that were displayed by a projector onto a large screen. His pictures featured the lives of Jews from around the world - ranging from a grandfather and his grandson studying the Torah on a dirt road in Rehovot, Israel, to two older Jewish men kissing a mezuzah in Alibag, India. The presentation also engaged teens in a way that made them look deeper into their own religious identities.

"What I learned [from Ozeri's photos] is that the next generation [of Jews] will make new traditions and the old ones will get forgotten unless we preserve them," said Max Wasserman, 15, of Medfield, who is a sophomore at Gann Academy.

Adi Tenenhaus, 16, a junior at Ironi Hey High School, said her involvement in the photography project helped her find a way to link her Judaism to being an Israeli kid. Tenenhaus' pictures are of a beach in Haifa, which she notes is a place that has always been able to bring her closer to her family and friends.

"I think this is a good assignment because it helps unite Jewish communities around the world," Tenenhaus added, speaking of her school's involvement in an exchange program with the Waltham institution.

Shirah Rubin, the chair of the art department at Gann Academy, said she brought Ozeri's project to students this semester so they could see examples of their Jewish culture and to also understand how Jews can be similar and different.

"It's about how do we look at images, how do we interpret them and how do we make something new," Rubin said. "It's a rejuvenation of Jewish life for the futures."